


Shatter Me

by Slanguage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Human!Castiel - Freeform, Humor, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Romantic Comedy, Very Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end, there had to be a sacrifice. Castiel bled for the Winchesters before they could stop him.</p><p>When Castiel wakes up four months later under an overpass in South Dakota, fate brings him into the path of a set of familiar names in his hunt for the Winchesters, who have dropped off the face of the Earth after his passing. Armed with a sheriff, a troubled teen, a fangirl, and a gangly werewolf, the group sets off to reunite the ex-angel with his missing Winchesters, no matter the overabundance of sarcasm, determined to let nothing stop them; not even a set of angry paranormal creatures hunting for the same brothers. Because death cannot stop true love—it can only delay it for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter Me

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the song “Shatter Me” by Lindsey Stirling featuring Lzzy Hale  
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49tpIMDy9BE). 
> 
> This story begins at a possible ending for Supernatural as a whole. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> *This fic was written after the premiere 9x19 and before 9x21, so all events that occur canonically afterward will not appear in this story*

Dean screamed as the Mark of Cain was ripped from his skin, from his very essence, purifying him. Sam screamed when the hellhound dug into his skin, his blood staining the ground beneath him. The angels screamed when they were roped into Heaven, to never return. The demons screamed when their gates closed. But the world stood still when Castiel looked into the eyes of Death himself.

“Are you sure you wish to come with me?” Death whispered in the silence of the chaos, his voice soft and welcoming just as it was foreboding, and Castiel’s heart felt like it was being ripped apart, spending its last moments beating trying to burst from his chest, but Castiel understood humanity enough now to know that, sometimes, it must end.

So Castiel said, “Yes.”

It would have been Sam. He knew it. He could see Dean dropped at his brother’s side, screaming for him to hold on, not remembering Castiel was there and not caring. It didn’t bother Castiel anymore. He was a satellite orbiting the farther reaches of Dean’s life, there to ping back information on the unknown when he was needed, to throw himself in front of a meteor hurtling to destroy him. Castiel would always be a sad soldier in a trench coat to Dean, and Castiel didn’t spend even the last moments of his life thinking otherwise.

The angels and the demons were gone. The veil was working again. Dean Winchester was safe.

It was all that Castiel needed.

“The sacrifice,” Sam gasped from the ground, his hand curling into Dean’s shirt. “Dean, just _let_ me—”

“No,” Dean snarled, his eyes flashing. “You’ll be fine, Sammy.”

“Dean,” Sam coughed, wincing, but Dean ignored him, pressing his hands over Sam’s injuries, knowing they wouldn’t be fatal if he didn’t let them be, and Castiel watched the brothers, thinking about all that he had done for them, all that he would still do, and he knew that this little gift of kindness, this sacrifice, would pay them back for every wrong he had ever done them.

Castiel looked at Dean and closed his eyes, just for a moment, and he opened them to find Death watching him curiously, his gaze flickering between Castiel and Dean, as if he had questions but didn’t care enough to ask them. Castiel straightened his shoulders and Death’s eyebrows went up, a silent question to ask if he was ready.

Death raised his hand—just one touch to Castiel’s life force and it would all be over—but the dull silence around them was shattered when Sam screamed, “ _Cas!_ ”

Castiel wondered when he had ceased to become _Castiel_ , the angel, and had become _Cas_ , the Winchesters’ friend. It had felt like a seamless transition, the lines blurred, and Castiel couldn’t even remember when Dean had last called him by his full name, or even if he ever had. Castiel was an angel, a celestial force to be feared, powered by faith and righteousness—but Cas was in love with Dean Winchester, and he was kind and a hunter and he wanted to save the world. Castiel couldn’t afford to be Cas today, not when he looked up and he saw Sam’s horrified face, not when he saw the color leak out of Dean’s when he realized what was happening.

“Cas, _no_!” Dean screamed, but he wouldn’t come and try to stop it. Dean wouldn’t let his brother bleed just to drag Castiel away from his own fate. Castiel knew it, and Dean knew it—there was frantic helplessness in his eyes, desperation, as he considered whether he could let go of Sam’s wounds and save Castiel. But, from the beginning of their gospel, Dean Winchester would always chose to save the same person if the moment came to it, and it would always be Sam. Castiel tried to smile at him, but he felt that his eyes were stinging, and he felt wet on his face.

 _Oh_ , he thought in the back of his mind. _I am crying._

Castiel held Dean’s eyes for a long time, thinking everything he wanted to say to him, thinking about all of the things they were never going to have, not with the way they lived, and Castiel felt another round of tears fall down his face as his crumpling heart let them all go. Castiel took in a deep, ragged breath as he looked at Dean one last time, memorizing his face, knowing that he would probably be facing no afterlife to remember him in but he wanted to cling to this moment for as long as he could. Castiel could see Sam’s lips moving, probably begging Dean to save Castiel from himself, tears shining in his eyes as well, but Castiel couldn’t look away from Dean.

Castiel wanted to say he was sorry, wanted to say goodbye to his friends. He wanted to thank Dean. He wanted to tell him that he loved him. But, in the end, he couldn’t even bring himself to fake a smile.

Castiel turned to Death, and Death didn’t ask again before reaching out and sinking his hand in Castiel’s chest, and he felt his borrowed grace burning like his flesh was against the surface of the sun, and Castiel closed his eyes as the light became too much to bare.

Castiel screamed as he died.

*

When Castiel opened his eyes, he was nowhere he had ever seen before.

He was underneath of a highway overpass, which was a very curious place to wake up to, but Castiel was beyond questioning the oddities of his existence, so he just mustered the strength to push himself onto his feet and look around. It was filled with heavy graffiti, and the cars overtop were deafening. Castiel tilted his head up and found sunlight peaking through the cracks, and he blinked, looking down at his hands.

He was dirty, as if he had been sleeping under the structure for a long time. He touched a small cut on the back of his hand, pressing into it hard, and he felt a flash of pain ripple under his skin, and he let it go, frowning. He looked down at himself.

He was wearing similar articles to what he had last worn, the formal attire he was so used to in this vessel, but he felt like he was hit in the solar plexus when he recognized the clothing as Jimmy Novak’s, the suit tailored to fit and the trench coat the same one he had worn on his shoulders for years. Castiel ran his hand down the familiar fabric, curling into it when he remembered Dean handing it back to him after the Leviathans and the way Dean’s eyes had flickered with a disappointment impossible to understand when Castiel returned to him after Gadreel with a new overcoat. Castiel took a deep breath, relishing in the feel of the expanding of his lungs, of the rapid beating of his heart beneath his rib cage.

He wondered vaguely if it was Heaven, but he should have known better—the gates of Heaven no longer opened for him.

Castiel reached up and touched his head, still staring down at his coat, and he didn’t even notice the approaching figure until he spoke.

“Hey!” the man yelled, startling Castiel, and he looked up at the figure with wide eyes. “You lost? What the hell are you doing down here?”

Castiel, confused, wandered a dozen steps closer to the man before he asked, “I am disoriented—this isn’t Heaven, is it?”

The man blinked slowly and then remarked, “What the hell is wrong with you, man? Of course not.”

Castiel nodded seriously. “And it is not Purgatory, so I assume I was sent to Hell. This is understandable. What level am I in?”

“Buddy, I think you fell and hit your head or something,” the man told him. “Either that or you’re crazy. Or drunk. You need a hospital?”

“Why would I need a hospital? I am not injured.”

“Because you’re talkin’ crazy about Heaven and Hell and shit. You one of those religious nuts?”

Castiel looked to the man in confusion.

The man appeared only a moment away from laughter when he glanced between Castiel and his truck, and then he shook his head, all movements that Castiel was having trouble comprehending the meaning behind. “Alright, fine—I’m gonna drive you to the hospital or to the police station, okay? You got a name?”

“I have several,” Castiel told the man, who snorted and rolled his eyes before giving him a beseeching, unamused stare, until Castiel nervously grated out, “Jimmy.”

“Name’s Rob,” the man said with a nod, and then gestured for the truck. “At least you know your name, huh?”

“I do not understand,” Castiel replied honestly.

“Goddamn, man,” Rob said, “I think you need to get out more.”

It sounded like a remark Dean would have made. Castiel’s heart compressed and it was hard to breathe for several seconds as he climbed into the cab of the truck, sitting there patiently while Rob started the engine, the radio switching on. Castiel didn’t think anything when _Heat of the Moment_ began to play, but Rob switched it off with a mumbled, “Who the hell plays Asia on the radio anymore, Jesus.”

After a minimal discussion, Rob dropped Castiel off at the police station rather than the hospital, since Castiel kept arguing that he was uninjured and therefore did not need medical attention, and Rob surmised that the police would handle the situation better if they believed differently, and Castiel offered a lame wave and a thank you as Rob pulled away from the curb, offering him a wave of his own.

Castiel looked up at the police station identified as belonging to Sioux Falls, and he wondered with a shock why in the world he would have ended up here.

He considered not going in—Castiel didn’t need help that human officers would be able to give him—but he didn’t know where else to go, and he figured they may be the best to ask in attempting to find out what happened the day of the world’s end, so he walked inside, glancing around curiously, his hands held limp at his sides.

A gruff man was sitting at the front desk, looking at a computer monitor with a shorter and younger female standing at his shoulder, both of them squinting at whatever they were reading, but they looked up when Castiel wandered up to them.

The woman’s eyebrows immediately went up, but her voice was kind and welcoming when she inquired, “What can we do for you, sir?”

“I am in Sioux Falls?” Castiel asked without needing the answer, continuing immediately, “Do you happen to know what day it is?”

“September seventeenth,” the male officer told him, and Castiel was startled.

“September?” he repeated. It was four months later than when he had sacrificed himself for the Winchesters. He felt his mouth curling into a frown.

“Sir, are you alright?” the woman asked, and Castiel looked back up at her.

“What happened to the demons?” Castiel demanded.

The male officer’s eyebrows rose immediately, and he casted a look to the woman, but she had straightened up, something revealing in her eyes, and she told the man, “I’m going to take him into one of the rooms. Don’t let anyone interrupt.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he said skeptically as the woman gestured for Castiel to follow, and Castiel, confused as ever, did as he was told, following her into a small room with a table and chairs, and he sat down in one of them cautiously while the woman closed the door behind them.

She paused before taking the other seat across from him, watching him like she was expecting him to lose his mind and start screaming, but Castiel just looked back at her, curious. She asked him kindly, “What’s your name?”

“Jimmy Novak,” he replied, and she smiled.

“That your real name?”

He hesitated before replying, “Castiel.”

Her eyes suddenly widened. “Wait, like, the angel?”

“I was once an angel, yes,” Castiel confirmed, squinting his eyes at her. “You are a hunter.”

“Of sorts, sure,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Jody Mills—and, uh, you wouldn’t happen to know about the Winchesters, would you?”

Castiel suddenly sat up straight, his eyes widening. “You know Sam and Dean?”

“Holy shit, you _are_ that Castiel,” she gasped, looking just as energized to be in his company, but now Castiel’s pulse was racing because _this woman knew Dean_. She reached up and gestured fruitlessly in the air before she managed, “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m alive?” Castiel demanded, incredulous.

“Okay, it seems like we are talkin’ on two different frequencies,” Jody said, and then leaned forward. “What the hell is going on?”

“I woke up underneath of a highway a short period of time ago,” Castiel told her eagerly, his hands shaking because _she knew Dean_. “I remember dying, but I remember nothing other than that—and it appears as though four months have gone by during that time that I am unaware of.”

“Holy shit,” Jody said again. “This is absolutely crazy. You still an angel?”

“No,” Castiel said, knowing that to be true, but not knowing any of it to be possible. “Do you know where Sam and Dean are?”

“I wish I did,” she sighed, and despair flooded through Castiel so strongly that he was nearly flattened by it. “Sam called to tell me what happened at the final showdown, and to tell me thanks for all of my help. He told me—he said he and Dean were droppin’ huntin’, probably forever. He said that they were gonna stop, because neither of them knew what to fight for.”

Castiel was stunned into a silence that he had only known moments before his death.

“Dean was apparently real broken up by it,” Jody informed him as if that would help, but the pain only worked its way deeper when Castiel considered how much had Dean struggled internally without the final nail of Castiel’s coffin. “Sam was injured pretty bad, but refused when I offered them a place to stay. Haven’t heard from them since. The phone he called me on turned out to be a motel phone.”

Castiel reached up and rubbed at his face, feeling the weight of his true age crushing down on him, and confessed, “I don’t know if they will welcome my return. Dean has not been welcoming in the past when situations such as these have occurred.”

“Dean is a moron,” Jody established. “Not entirely, sure, but he’s not the best when it comes to emotions and things like that, alright? Don’t let that slow you down. I know what you did for them, Castiel, and I think you at least deserve a thank you and some gratitude from those boys.”

“I don’t know if the seal has stayed stuck,” Castiel told her, “if the sacrifice meant to be binding them together has returned to life.”

“There’s been no signs of any angels or demons in the last long while,” Jody told him, spreading her hands. “Nothing astronomical happened to signal they’re back, either, so I think it’s safe to assume you found some kind of loophole in the deal. You got a friend up there that would grant you a pass?”

“No,” Castiel said.

“Hmm. Well, best not question it for now, right? Maybe we should get you somewhere safe first.”

“I’m fine. I just want to look for Sam and Dean.”

“I would offer to look up a sign of ’em in the system,” Jody began hesitantly, “but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea, since they’ve been wanted by the FBI at least twice, and I don’t want to be throwin’ up some red flags I don’t have to. Is there someplace you can think of that they would go? Like, didn’t they have a house or somethin’?”

“The bunker,” Castiel realized, and then got to his feet. “Lebanon, Kansas. I could ideally find my way there without instruction.”

“Oh,” Jody said, sounding surprised that it was that easy. “Okay then, awesome. Need a ride?”

Castiel had a sudden moment of dread when he remembered he no longer had his wings for the second and probably last time in his life, and his shoulders slumped. “I would require transport, yes.”

“Alright,” Jody chirped. “How about this—I take you to my house and let you simmer for a couple of hours, maybe get you all washed up, and then I’ll take a couple of days off work here and get you back to Kansas?”

Castiel could not believe his luck. He stared at the woman for a moment, as if thinking that he was having a vivid hallucination, and he said, “Thank you.”

“Sure thing,” Jody said, and then smiled at him, the movement soft and kind and secret, and he saw the woman beyond the uniform, the woman that Dean and Sam must have known. “I’ve been worried about those boys, despite not needing to be. It would put my mind at ease to know they’re doin’ okay.”

Castiel nodded like he understood, and he supposed he did—Jody Mills, for all of her tough exterior, was a mothering figure at heart, and Castiel could see it in the way she looked at him, at the way she smiled at him when she understood who he was and what had happened to him. Jody Mills was a woman that no one could hate; if Castiel could see it, she would probably have a brilliant soul.

Jody left him in the small room when she went out to make their excuses and stopped back in to fetch him when she was believed, and she gestured for him to follow her. She brought him to her squad car and let him sit in the back when he was curious, smirking at him in the rearview mirror when he glanced eagerly around at the small mobile cage. She pulled up in front of a one-story home painted in a light blue several minutes away from the police station, and she lead him up to the front door with no words necessary, the door swinging open without needing a key.

“Alex, what did I tell you about the door?” Jody yelled into the structure, dropping her keys onto the front table. She strode inside and Castiel meandered after her, closing the door politely after him. “Get on in here—want you to meet somebody.”

Jody was offering Castiel a seat the dining room table when a dark-haired girl probably about eighteen years of age walked out into the living room, pausing uncertainly when she caught sight of Castiel. She nervously crossed her arms over her chest as she appraised him.

“Who are you?” the girl, Alex, he assumed, demanded.

“My name is Castiel,” he replied easily, and the girl shot him an incredulous look.

“Castiel?” she echoed, and then laughed slightly. “What kind of name is that?”

“You remind me of someone I once knew,” Castiel told her instead of answering the question, thinking of a moment that felt like a million years ago, when the Winchesters introduced him to a young hunter named Jo Harvelle.

Alex narrowed her eyes at him, confused by his segue, and then deadpanned, “You’re weird.”

“He used to be an angel,” Jody filled in the gaps, shrugging when Alex’s eyebrows went up. “Long story. Maybe, if you ask him nicely, he’ll tell it to you.”

“Maybe,” Alex said, but she seemed interested.

“He and I are gonn go lookin’ for the Winchesters for a few days,” Jody informed the girl. “I gotta get back to work, so would you mind playin’ homemaker for a bit till I get home? He’s harmless—just a little awkward. Sorry to talk about you when you’re standin’ right there, Castiel.”

“It’s no bother,” Castiel replied honestly, looking around the living room innocently. Alex looked amused.

“No worries, Jody,” Alex told her as Jody headed back toward the door. “Castiel here and I will probably be best friends by the time you get back.”

Jody’s responding snort was so loud that it echoed back to them from outside.

Alex turned to Castiel, her arms crossed over her chest as she curiously examined him, and then looked up to meet his eyes, a grin making its way onto her lips. “You know how to play poker?” she asked him.

“I have some familiarity with it, yes.”

“Good,” Alex said, and Castiel let her lead him to the kitchen table.

*

Alex turned out to be a lovely girl who knew how to play poker much better than Castiel did, to the point he was almost thankful they weren’t betting with anything monetary because he would have been in the negatives. Alex sat with a pile of sugary candies she explained were called Skittles as Castiel eventually told her everything—from Heaven to the apocalypse to every disaster that happened after it. She made a choked sound that sounded sad when he told her about Purgatory, and she held her breath when he told her what it felt like to lose his grace and tumble to Earth. She paused her mindless eating of the candies when he told her about the finale, about giving his life as a sacrifice to close the gates, and how that had been the first time he had cried.

“Why did you offer yourself to Death, if you wanted to live so badly?” she asked him, and he smiled sadly.

“It wouldn’t have been a sacrifice if I had wanted to die,” he explained to her softly, and then tried to smile at her. He didn’t think it worked. “I wanted nothing more in that moment than to live. And that’s why it worked. To seal those gates, there had to be something great and terrible. Offering my life gave that opportunity.”

“You’ve always given everything for the Winchesters, though,” Alex whispered, her eyes wide, surprised, and possibly even reverent. “What have they given you?”

Castiel paused, looking at her. He thought about losing his faith, and he thought about losing his life, more than once. He thought about losing his grace and then getting a new one, and then what happened to him because of it. He thought about everything he gave for the Winchesters, and all that he had lost, and he had lost so much. To the objective eye, it would look as though Castiel was in a negative drop.

But he knew better. So he told Alex, “They’ve given me life.”

And she didn’t argue with that.

Instead, she told him her own story—about getting abducted by a vampire family when she was little and being raised to be loyal. She used to bait their victims, and then she had enough and ran away, and she found herself locked up in Sioux Falls, where she encountered Jody. Jody called in the Winchesters and they had saved her from that life—no matter how afraid she was of leaving it, no matter how afraid she was of everything that could go wrong living in this world with some strange woman.

“It was the best choice of my life,” Alex whispered, closing her eyes. “I guess the Winchesters kind of saved me, too. They cured my vampirism, and that gave me a second chance.”

“They save a lot of people, even if they don’t think that they do.”

Alex smiled at him. “Sounds like someone else I know, huh?”

Castiel didn’t understand what she meant, although her pointed look was as if she was speaking of him, and he was about to ask her what she meant by that before the front door opened, and Jody’s voice drifted toward them from the entrance.

“Hope you both didn’t kill each other,” Jody called, “’cause I brought food.”

“Not hungry,” Alex said, and then popped another Skittle in her mouth, winking at Castiel.

Jody appeared in the doorway, and her mouth popped open when she spotted the mound of candy. “Is that the entire package?” she demanded incredulously, almost horrified. “Alex, what the _hell_?”

“Castiel is a poor poker player,” the girl responded, and then laughed.

Castiel smiled at the girl, glad that the fear and sadness that had been in her eyes when she was discussing her past so easily dissipated in that sound, vanquished by the light and openness she struggled to let her personality become, glad that he could allow her some reason to smile so brightly. He looked up at Jody to find her looking at Alex, looking startled, like the reaction surprised her, and she turned her eyes to Castiel inquiringly, curiously. When she saw him smiling at both of them, her own face broke into a wide grin, causing lines to sprout from the corners of her eyes and for laugh lines to be outlined around her mouth.

Human nature, Castiel thought, was so beautiful.

“That’s enough Skittles for you,” Jody told Alex playfully, grabbing a bowl from the counter and scooping the candies into it, to Alex’s halfhearted protest. “You can eat outta this later, but I got rotisserie chicken and potato salad, and I know you’ve been cravin’ that.”

“Potato salad,” Alex groaned, and then hopped out of her chair and skipped down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t blink, Jody.”

Jody rolled her eyes as Alex disappeared into the bathroom she had showed Castiel earlier. Castiel looked at Jody, confused at the joke, having apparently lost the omniscient ability to recognize popular culture references that Metatron had forced upon him.

“It’s from a television show,” Jody explained dutifully, scoffing as she started gathering plates, rifling through drawers. “There’re these creepy stone angels that can only move when you don’t look at ’em, and then they try to kill you.”

Castiel’s offended expression caused Jody to laugh so hard that the windows practically vibrated.

*

Alex insisted on coming with them on their sojourn, despite Jody considering she wouldn’t want to. Alex used the excuse of wanting to ask Castiel more questions and wanting to teach him terrible car games in the hopes he will want to initiate them with the Winchesters after they have found them, and Jody was so floored by the excuse that she couldn’t even give a sarcastic response, so they all packed into the car early in the morning the next morning and started their trip.

Jody had invited Castiel into the front seat but he told her he was far more comfortable with the back. Although this car and every other he had ever been in was so different from a ride in the Impala, he could remember riding in the Winchester’s automobile like it was his most important memory of them. He sat in the middle of the backseat of Jody’s truck and gazed out the windows curiously as Alex told him all about billboards and mile-markers and songs on the radio that he didn’t understand the meaning of. Jody didn’t seem to mind, and Alex seemed almost eager to fill the car with stories and useless trivia, and Castiel was eager to listen.

It was fascinating how even the most meaningless piece of minutiae gave him the feeling of discovering something amazing for the first time. Even when it was extinguished when, as Alex told him something new, he immediately thought to himself, _I should tell Dean_.

Right after they took a rest stop in Nebraska, halfway into the trip, Alex made it her own personal mission to teach Castiel “every boring car game in existence”.

He didn’t think any of them were boring. Alex seemed so pleased that he had taken a liking to I Spy that she spent two hours playing it with him, only for them both to fall silent when Jody pulled up into the city of Lebanon and she needed Castiel to give her some more concrete instructions.

When they pulled up the correct road, Castiel got antsy. He couldn’t stop fidgeting, his eyes eagerly on the windshield watching the familiar surroundings pass, and his hands clutched hard at the top of Alex and Jody’s seats when they saw the end nearing and the bunker hunkered into the earth.

“There it is,” Castiel breathed, feeling relief and excitement and other enormously powerful emotions humans feel all the time that nearly knocked him over. “That’s it. That’s the door.”

“They lived here?” Alex demanded, looking out the window and frowning. “Don’t look like much.”

“It’s expansive on the interior,” Castiel informed them.

“It’s bigger on the inside?” Alex laughed. Jody shot her a look, and shook her head when Castiel went to ask. His curiosity was squelched when he looked back to the door, knowing that he may well be moments away from Sam and Dean, that he would be able to tell them that he was sorry and to tell Dean that he loved him.

“Hmm,” Jody said as they climbed out of the car, glancing around. “No car out front. Doesn’t look like anybody’s home. There a garage in this place?”

“There is,” Castiel told them distractedly, moving toward the door, reaching above it the same way he had seen Sam do more than a dozen times. He found the key as Jody and Alex joined him at the doorway, hanging back and letting him discover for himself. His hand shook as he unlocked the door.

He opened the door. The light was on.

His heart raced. It was an intoxicating feeling as much as it was stifling.

“Dean?” Castiel called into the room, heading for the stairs as Jody and Alex hung by the doorway, gaping at the inside. “Dean? Sam?”

“What the hell is this place?” Alex demanded, descending the stairs and staring in awe at the interior. “This belongs to Sam and Dean?”

“It was handed down to them, yes,” Castiel explained to them as they wandered into the library, Castiel frowning as he spotted one of the mobile music players that Alex had showed him only in a vibrant shade of pink sitting on the library table, a book laying beside it. “This bunker belongs to the Men of Letters, archivists of the supernatural on the earth. They did the research and directed hunters to creatures they needed to kill. Sam and Dean’s grandfather belonged to them when Abaddon possessed a woman amongst their midst and slaughtered them all during an initiation ceremony.”

“Jesus,” Alex muttered.

“No,” Castiel replied, confused, and Alex laughed loudly.

“Oh, I hear laughter,” a strange voice said, and the three of them whirled around to find a wide-eyed redhead standing in the doorway leading to the kitchen, clutching a knife at her chest. “I thought you were here to kill me or something. You aren’t, right? Because that would be _so_ lame. The wifi here isn’t nearly good enough for me to be okay with dying here.”

Castiel demanded, “Who are you?”

“My name is Charlie,” she responded, and the name was familiar to Castiel. “Who are you guys? I assume you knew Sam and Dean, since you were calling them by name and all that.”

“ _Knew_?” Jody demanded instead of answering Charlie’s request. “Why past tense?”

“This is their house and I haven’t seen them since I’ve been back for the last, like, four months,” Charlie explained to them, and then shrugged. “It’s really weird. This is the only place I got, so I figured something might’ve happened to them, especially since all the demons and angels are gone.”

“You could’ve looked for them,” Jody replied.

“Rude,” Alex told Jody, and then turned back to Charlie with a small grin. “I’m Alex, that’s Jody, and this here is Castiel. He’s—”

Charlie gasped wildly, and Castiel and Jody both glanced behind them to make sure some nasty creature wasn’t approaching or something. Charlie was staring at Castiel like he had just murdered a pile of puppies right in front of her, and he blinked, stunned.

“Is that alright?” he asked her uncertainly.

“ _You’re_ Castiel?” she demanded, and then squealed happily and started jumping up and down. “Oh my god, you are _just_ as dreamy as I imagined you would be! Dean’s _so_ been holding out.”

“I don’t understand what is happening,” Castiel announced.

“Everybody, sit down,” Charlie urged them, still hopping on her feet and grinned excitedly. “I’m gonna make us some tea so we can have some girl talk. Anyone want anything else? Hungry?”

Alex’s stomach growled.

“Oh my god,” Alex mumbled, looking mortified, but Charlie just grinned and dove into the kitchen, calling a promise over her shoulder for snacks before she disappeared, becoming just a set of sounds from the other room, and the three she left behind just sat in a startled silence in her absence.

“Well,” Jody said, “she’s not the Winchesters.”

“She may be able to help us find them,” Castiel pointed out. “Otherwise, she seems harmless.”

“Hey, free food,” Alex said, and then shrugged. “I’m not questioning it. We can figure out a little more of this crazy later, after I eat and she’s done drooling all over Castiel.”

They all silently agreed, and, although Castiel was concerned about the idea of drool, he chose to keep that worry to himself.

*

“You’re saying he _never_ mentioned me?” Charlie demanded, pouting. “That’s so upsetting. Me and Dean are besties. He is _so_ not getting the remote the next time we marathon.”

“He _has_ mentioned you,” Castiel disagreed, not wanting her to give Dean a lack of privileges just because Castiel had been insensitive. “I simply did not remember your name. I apologize.”

“All’s well, Cas,” Charlie said, and then paused. “Is it okay that I call you that? I know that’s Dean’s thing.”

“Sam calls me that as well,” Castiel told her, nodding. “I don’t mind it.”

“Okeydokes!” she chimed, grinning at him. “So the gist of everything that’s happened lately with you guys is that you closed the gates but got killed while doing it. And now you’re back and you don’t know what’s up.”

Castiel paused before saying, “Basically, yes.”

“And now you’re on the hunt for your long-lost love,” Charlie sighed, clutching at the skin over her heart. “That’s so adorable. You guys are sickly sweet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s kinda like a wind-up toy,” Alex explained to Charlie, gesturing to Castiel. “You can pull the little string at his back and he says a few phrases. The most common one is ‘I don’t understand’. The next is probably just ‘Dean’.”

Charlie cracked up. “I like you, kid. You’ve got moxie.”

Alex rolled her eyes.

“I was under the impression you were sent into a different world of some kind,” Castiel explained to Charlie, changing the topic of the conversation from him to something more pressing and important. “Dean mentioned it only in passing when I asked. We were dealing with a large situation at the time.”

Charlie sighed wistfully. “What happened was that I followed a cutie into an alternate dimension and our relationship, like all of my relationships, turned out to be a bust. I tried finding my way back on my own but came up with next to nothing but some talking squirrels—it’s a long story, Cas, don’t worry about it—and then, all of a sudden, the dimension just spit me out back here. Guess it all got thrown off when the gates closed and it put everyone back where they belonged.”

“Interesting,” Castiel murmured, tilting his head as he looked at Charlie. “What dimension were you in?”

“Oz,” Charlie said, and then told a mid-word Alex, “Yeah, that one.”

“I need a beer,” Jody muttered into the bowl of pretzels, looking like she was ready to sleep for decades.

“It was fun while it lasted,” Charlie told them, sighing happily again. “But, I gotta say, it’s better to be back here. Internet is a blessing like none other. Star Trek, too. And Harry Potter. And, like, everything else.”

“Right?” Alex agreed.

“You hacked Dick Roman’s computer, correct?” Castiel asked Charlie, and then told a mid-word Alex, “Yes, that one.”

“I did indeed,” Charlie said, and then shuttered. “God, forgot about that guy. What a creep.”

“You are good with technology—would you be able to use it to find Sam and Dean?”

“Maybe,” Charlie said, but she didn’t seem convinced. “Sorry, bud, but they use more fake accounts than I do, and that’s saying something. I wouldn’t know what to look for. They probably even changed their license plates. From what I’ve read, the two of them learned from the best how to stay under the radar, so it’s not gonna be easy.”

“Is there anything that they left here that we could work with?” Jody asked. “An address book, a phone number, anything?”

Charlie frowned in concentration and then said, “I found some stuff in that kid Kevin’s old notes that we might be able to use. Hold on.”

Charlie got up and moved to the other side of the room to a pile of notebooks, rifling through them until she came up with the only one that was purple, and she came back and dropped it on the table in front of them. She shrugged when they sent her a questioning look. “It was the only one that was a color. It stuck out.”

Charlie paged through it, looking for something specific, and stopped suddenly, pointing at a scribble made in the margin of one of the pages. Castiel leaned forward to read the sentence “weird-ass giraffe guy”, followed by a phone number. Charlie grinned proudly at her find.

“Didn’t think it would be important, but I thought it was funny,” Charlie informed them, and shrugged. “I have a selective memory.”

“Worth a shot,” Jody said, and then looked to Charlie. “Can you track that number?”

“Sister, I can get you into the email that phone uses if you wanted it,” Charlie told her, and then winced. “Ah, you’re police, aren’t you? I’ve said a lot of illegal things. Please don’t arrest me.”

Jody just rolled her eyes at her and prompted her, “Search for it.”

“Okay,” Charlie responded softly, already typing at the computer. “Might take a couple of hours. Despite what cop shows make it seem, it actually takes a little bit to find a number if you don’t generally know where it is, and my system will find the exact location and address. You all wanna stay the night here? This place is hella creepy at night and I would appreciate the company.”

Jody shrugged and Alex agreed happily. Castiel watched the grin pull at Charlie’s lips, and he wondered if she had been lonely.

“Awesome,” she chirped, jumping to her feet. “Let’s go find you some rooms.”

*

“This place is huge,” Jody whispered as she gaped around at the hallways. “I wasn’t ever even all that sure the Winchesters _did_ have a house, but they had this the entire time? This is _cool_.”

“Right?” Charlie asked, skipping down the hallway to the residential wing, gesturing to two doors. “Those are Sam and Dean’s rooms. I haven’t touched them. Mine’s the one on the right. You three can help yourself to any of the others—except for the one across from mine. Dean freaked out one time when I tried to go in there and now I’m convinced there’s some beast hibernating in there or something.”

Alex took a small step away from it just to be sure.

But Castiel said, “That’s my room.”

All three of them turned to look at him, quiet, suggestion that he didn’t understand in the air. He ignored them and moved to the door, opening it slowly, flicking on the light.

It was just how it had been the last time he was there. Which is to say, simple and undecorated. One of Dean’s borrowed shirts still sat at the foot of the bed, Castiel having not been able to muster the guts to put it on when it had been offered. He walked over to it now, picking it up, touching the fabric reverently.

He didn’t even realize he had an audience until Charlie sighed and said, “He’s so _lovesick_ ”, from the doorway.

“It’s so cute,” Alex sighed in agreement, and Charlie and her shared a conspiring nod.

“Okay, shipping session over,” Jody called them to order, gesturing for them to shoo. “Dinner in a few hours, Cas, if you wanna join us. If not, you should get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

“Sleep is difficult,” he told her.

“Because of nightmares?” Her tone was sympathetic, and her eyes shined with motherly comfort.

Castiel nearly flinched away before he told her, “No. There are no sheep in order for me to count, and I do not understand the rest of the tricks.”

“Oh,” Jody said, and then laughed. “I’ll get you some NyQuil, then. I’m sure they have an infirmary here or something with the size of this place.”

She skipped off to make sure Alex and Charlie weren’t getting into too much trouble, and Castiel sunk down onto the bed, still holding the shirt cautiously in his hands as if he were afraid of ruining it. He weighed the cotton in his hands, running his fingers over it softly, wondering if he would ever get to see Dean again, wondering if this whole search would lead them nowhere and if the Winchesters would never again be found.

He was deep in his thoughts to the point he didn’t even notice Charlie reappear in the doorway when she whispered, “We’re gonna find them, you know?”

He jumped before he asked, “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“It’s probably the same as what Dean was always thinking when you were gone,” Charlie told him a little teasingly, a little sadly. “I’ve been meaning to start looking for them, which is why I remembered the phone number, but I didn’t want to go alone, and I didn’t want to find them if they didn’t want to be found, you know? They respected my boundaries, and I didn’t want to cross theirs. I didn’t want to accidentally shove them back into a life they didn’t want to live. I let them run. But I know they would stop running if they knew you were okay. Even if they didn’t come back, they would at least _stop_ , and maybe that would do them some good.”

“We left things unsaid,” Castiel said. “Dean and I, and Sam and I. Mostly Dean and I. I know I need to say them, I need him to know—but I am afraid that his response may have the ability to shatter me.”

“Isn’t that the point of love, though?” Charlie asked softly. “To be shattered?”

Castiel looked back down at the shirt, and did not reply.

“I found the phone,” Charlie informed him, and he looked up again, but his chest felt tighter. “It’s at what looks to be a boat at a lake in Warsaw, Missouri. We could leave in the morning, if you want.”

“Whenever everyone wants,” Castiel said. “I don’t believe one address will be enough to find them.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said, “or maybe not. We’ll find them, Castiel. I owe Dean that much.”

Charlie turned to leave, and then paused. Castiel watched her hesitate before she decided, and she turned back to him with fire in her eyes.

“We’ll find them, Cas,” Charlie promised him, no room in her voice for doubt or argument. “Even when Jody and Alex have to go back to civilization, you and me will hunt them down and find them if we have to. I don’t have anyone in this entire world that I can rely on other than those brothers, and they deserve to be happy. And I don’t know if Dean can be happy if he thinks he killed you. I’ll fight a million monsters if it means you and Dean can see each other again.”

“You’re very kind to me,” Castiel noticed, and Charlie smirked.

“You’re half of my ultimate OTP, Cas,” Charlie told him. “Of _course_ I’m nice to you.”

Charlie laughed loudly before she walked away, and Castiel never did find out what an OTP was.

*

“Left,” Charlie mumbled tiredly, hunkered down in the seat next to Castiel. Jody began to turn left and Charlie yelled, “Wait, no, your other left!”

Alex’s face was fixed into an amused smirk, as it had been for the last hour while Charlie tried to play navigator and Jody tried not to lose her thinning patience. Charlie had apparently been up late online dealing with a “shipping war” and hadn’t gotten her preferred eight hours of rest, and she had been acting like a four year old all day. Or so Jody claimed.

Charlie swallowed a yawn before claiming, “It should be just up ahead.”

“I spy a boat,” Alex said, and Castiel wanted to remind her that was not the way the game was played, but decided against it, figuring that she knew she had broken her own rules. Jody pulled off to the side of the dirt road and threw the car in park, all of them ducking to look out the windshield.

“What’s the name of the boat?” Charlie asked. Castiel thought it was a weird question.

“Fizzle’s Folly,” Alex said, and then snorted very loudly. “Oh my god, that’s ridiculous. It sounds like a puppet murder mystery.”

Charlie laughed with her, but Jody was already out of the car, at the end of her rope. Castiel slipped out of the car with her, and Alex and Charlie followed soon after. They looked at the boat curiously.

It was a decent sized boat. An older, rusty car was parked out front of the dock.

“Looks like they’re home,” Jody murmured.

“Should we just walk up and knock at the door?” Alex asked uncertainly, looking at the floating structure cautiously. “We don’t know who owns that boat. We don’t even know if he actually looks like a giraffe.”

“Oh, you pansies,” Charlie said, and then she was storming across the patch of grass to the dock, Castiel following right behind her. After another second, the sound of Jody and Alex joining them reached his ears, but he didn’t slow his pace past Charlie’s shadow.

Charlie climbed onto the boat shamelessly, glancing around. “Hello?” she called out, and then raised her eyebrows with a funny face at Castiel, and he wasn’t sure what she meant so he just climbed onto the boat with her. “Is there anyone boat-home?”

“It’s a safe-boathouse, not a boat-home,” a voice corrected from the other side of the door.

“Um,” Charlie said. “Room service?”

“Who are you?”

“Charlie. Who is this?”

“Garth.”

“The hunter?” Castiel asked.

“Who is that?”

“Castiel.”

“Who is Castiel?”

“That’s a long story. Can you just open the door? Your neighbors are going to think I’m crazy.”

The door open and a man with a long neck peaked out, frowning. “I don’t have any neighbors,” he pointed out to Charlie.

Charlie grinned at him before shoving her way inside. “I know that. The word gullible is on the ceiling.”

“What?” Garth asked, and then looked upward.

Alex lost it. “Oh man, this is going to be fun,” she giggled to herself, grinning as she also forced her way past Garth. “At least we know he _does_ look like a giraffe,” Castiel heard her murmur not-so-quietly to Charlie.

Garth touched his neck self-consciously before squinting at Castiel, curious. “Do I know any of you?”

“You know the Winchesters,” Jody replied, clambering onto the boat. “And we’re tryin’a find them.”

“Sam and Dean?” Garth demanded, as if there were possibly any other Winchesters a group of random people would be looking for. “I haven’t heard from them in a long while. Ever since I was married. And not homeless.”

“What happened?” Charlie asked.

Garth shrugged. “Normal life, even as a werewolf, gets a little boring.”

All at once, Charlie, Alex, and Jody all took a firm step away from him.

“You’re a werewolf?” Alex demanded. “Ah, okay, I’m out of here. I trust dogs only slightly more than I trust fangs.”

“I’ve never hurt anybody!” Garth insisted, actually insulted. “I promise! I’m just divorced and live in a boat!”

Castiel asked, “Do you know what happened?”

“With the world? Heard the Winchesters slammed the doors on Heaven and Hell. Sounds balls. Kinda wish I was there, but probably not, because I’m afraid for my life a little bit every time I see them.”

“We’re looking for them,” Charlie enlightened him, and then pointed at Castiel. “He’s their angel friend. You’ve probably heard of him.”

“Oh, I totally have,” Garth said, and then grinned. “They mentioned you once or twice. How are you, angel man?”

“I’m human now,” Castiel said. “I also have no home.”

Garth nodded sympathetically. “It’s a hard knock life, huh?”

“Focus, both of you,” Charlie told them, and then rolled her eyes once all eyes were back on her. “Anyways, we’re trying to reunite Castiel with his long-lost love, so we’re looking for them. Any ideas where they could be?”

“Literal none,” Garth said, shrugging. “I helped them out a little bit and let one of their friends stay here when they were hiding from demons, but we aren’t super close.”

Charlie sighed. “Oh well. Worth a shot.”

“Wait,” Garth said, and then looked at Castiel with raised eyebrows. “Did she say _long-lost love_?”

“Those were her words, yes,” he replied.

“Dude, you’re trying to find them to confess your love to Dean?” Garth demanded, and then clapped happily, grinning widely. “I wanna help!”

“She never said it was Dean,” Alex pointed out.

“Of _course_ it’s Dean,” Garth snorted in response, and no one knew how to respond to that. “So, can I join in? Or is there, like, an initiation I have to go through?”

Alex’s eyes sparkled and she opened her mouth, but Jody reached over and slapped her hand over it before she could say anything, smiling kindly to Garth. “We’ll take all the help we can get at this point. You have any werewolf friends that might’ve run into them?”

“Probably not any that lived to tell the tale,” Garth said somberly, and the girls looked horrified before Garth burst out laughing and said, “Aw, I’m just kidding—it’s monster humor. Dean and Sam are our ghouls and goblins. Well, I guess they’re just our _goblins_ , since ghouls are real and I don’t think—”

“Garth.”

“Sorry. I could call up some old hunter friends of mine if you want.”

“Perfect.” Jody raised her eyebrows. “Can you leave soon?”

“How soon is soon?” he asked. “ _Hannibal_ is on tonight, and I really don’t want to miss it.”

“Ooh,” Charlie said. “Me either.”

Jody closed her eyes, looking like she was two minutes away from punching all of them. Except for maybe Castiel. She seemed to feel too bad for Castiel to do him any harm.

“We should keep moving,” Jody told them patiently, letting out a long exhale. “Garth, start making calls, please. Alex and I are gonna go dig up that old roadmap out of my trunk. Castiel—you can, uh, go stand in the corner and pine or somethin’. Alright?”

Everyone voiced their agreement—except for Castiel, who instead felt a little insulted—and they all set off to do their jobs, Castiel following Garth into the home part of the boat-home. He threw himself down casually onto the couch, grabbing a laptop, and Charlie joined him, already typing at hers.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “If we’re not at a television, I’ll just stream the episode live on the interwebs.”

“Bless you,” Garth told her, picking up his phone.

Castiel would never admit it, but he ended up in the corner pining.

*

After an hour of phone calls, Garth reported that he didn’t find the Winchesters, but he _did_ find a hunter who had to abandon a hunt where a bunch of werewolves and vampires were congregating for no apparent reason other than something sinister, so they elected to take a look at that while Jody had work off and the rest of them were unemployed with nothing else better to do.

Olney, Illinois, Home of the White Squirrel (Charlie felt the need to inform them, although they were unsure how she knew that), was about a six-hour drive, so they all decided that they could make it there before _Hannibal_ and that they should get a move on and not waste any daylight. They had only hesitated outside of the safe-boathouse when they had all looked at the two different cars, knowing they wouldn’t be able to fit into one.

“I’ll ride with Garth, I guess,” Charlie said.

“Nuh uh,” Alex objected. “That’s major stranger danger.”

“Hey,” Garth cried, looking hurt. “I’m not going to hurt her!”

“I’ll ride with Garth,” Castiel said, ending the discussion. Once they were all in their decided cars, Castiel announced to Garth, “I am not very good at small talk.”

“I have music,” Garth offered, and then Castiel spent the remaining five hours and fifty-five or so minutes listening to Garth talk about the histories of his favorite bands over their sound from the radio, and Castiel sat calmly and listened, every once in a while asking a question he wanted an answer to, otherwise content with letting Garth fill the silence.

The music was something far from what would have been playing in the Impala. Castiel had a feeling that Dean would have jumped out the window before the Missouri state lines, especially when Garth started giving Castiel trivia about The Eagles.

They acquired two motel rooms from a small place outside of the town before the five of them sat around one small television and watched the new _Hannibal_ , leaving Castiel both intrigued and concerned from the plot of the show as Garth popped out to see if he could find the werewolves.

Charlie was losing tremendously at poker to Alex as Jody and Castiel watched when Garth burst through the door, looking both overjoyed and horrified.

“You will never believe this,” he told them excitedly, flailing. “Good news or bad news?”

“Bad news,” Charlie said.

Garth paused, and than made a face. “Actually, the bad news doesn’t sound as good going first.”

“Then tell us the good news,” Alex said, rolling her eyes.

Garth practically exploded with joy when he announced, “I found the Winchesters! They’re here in Olney, working at one of the pubs on the edge of town!”

“What?” Jody gasped. “That’s amazing! Castiel, did you hear that?”

Castiel just sat there, surprised.

“What’s the bad news?” Charlie asked Garth curiously.

“There are twenty werewolves and vampires here to kill them,” Garth deadpanned, and the whole room fell into a stunned silence.

“I see what you meant about the order thing,” Alex murmured after a moment, and Garth nodded solemnly, looking Castiel nervously.

“When are they attacking?” Castiel demanded, and Garth jumped, as if he couldn’t believe he had forgotten to tell them that.

“Oh,” Garth said. “They’re probably there now.”

Another silence, and then Jody screeched, “ _What?_ ”

“They don’t plan on killing them immediately,” Garth responded, wincing, but he looked just as distressed as the rest of them. “They’re gonna keep them in an empty house by the lake until tomorrow night and then they’re gonna, ah . . . They’re gonna let them run and hunt them. They weren’t _nice_ werewolves and vampires.”

“We have to get them out of there as soon as possible,” Castiel announced he obvious, turning to look at his new unlikely friends. “We need a plan.”

“I’m not very good at those,” Charlie said.

Jody sighed. “Okay, everyone. Cut off the heads of the vampires, and silver bullets for the werewolves. Try not to hit Garth.”

“Please,” Garth added.

“Any questions?”

There were none, so Jody nodded. “Okay. Garth, can you point us in the direction of the house?”

“Yuppers.”

“Awesome. Okay. Let’s gear up and get the hell out of here.”

Castiel’s heart was beating hard against his chest. He reached up and placed his hand over the skin, wondering if his heart would pound straight out of his chest, and it hurt to breathe. A hand touched his arm and he jumped, looking up into Charlie’s eyes, and she offered him a kind smile.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

She nodded and then grinned and said, “You ready for this?”

He wasn’t, but he said yes anyway.

Charlie grabbed the sleeve of his trench coat and dragged him behind her, saying as they walked out of the room, “Hope you’re a good shot, Cas, ’cause Alex probably sucks and we can’t afford for half of our team to be handicapped.”

Castiel somehow wasn’t even nervous. He didn’t think Dean or Sam would die—they had come too far for a pack of angry vampires and werewolves to do them in, and they even had backup they didn’t even know about—and he wasn’t worried about seeing them, either, because it might be just like every time, and those had all ended up fine enough.

No. Castiel wasn’t nervous.

This was his last chance at life, and Castiel was ready for it the best he could be.

He took a deep breath, accepted the gun Garth offered him, and prepared for the unknown.

*

It seemed that the majority of the vampire-werewolf twenty had all been looming in one place, which was not a thoughtful strategy, and about twelve of them were killed far enough away from the empty house that those inside probably hadn’t even been able to hear the gunshots with their sensitive hearing.

Garth was probably the most disappointed of them all, but not because of the easy kill.

“Let’s just take one of the bodies, and we can _throw it_ through the front window,” Garth urged them excitedly. “Come on, I saw it in _Hannibal_ once, it was crazy dramatic!”

“Dude, no,” Alex hissed back, disturbed.

They drove Jody’s car until about a quarter of a mile out, and then they parked it and walked from then on out, drawing no company from the house, so they wondered if the remaining eight were either too preoccupied with whatever was in the house or they weren’t even in there—but, after a pause, Garth murmured that they were in there and giving their dramatic dialogue of their treachery to the brothers, who were apparently less than amused, so they walked on.

The house was a small cabin a slight walk’s away from the lake, far enough from the nearest neighborhood that they might be able to get away with the gunshots, so they paused a hundred yards away, hunkered in the shadows, and realized they probably should have established a better plan before this point.

“What should we do now?” Charlie hissed through her teeth. They all turned, a little inexplicably, to look to Castiel for guidance for the first time since they pulled in at Olney. Castiel blinked at them, caught unawares.

Castiel got as far as “uh” before Garth suddenly took off running for the house, moving faster than they could catch, moving with purpose.

“Shit,” Charlie said.

They all watched, half in horror and half in amazement, as Garth pointed his running form in the direction of the front window, braced himself, and then jumped, smashing through the glass and into the main room. There was the sound of surprised gasps and glass hitting the ground before they watched the form of Garth stand up straight, and he chirped, “Hey, guys!”

“ _Garth?_ ” Sam demanded before there was the sound of chaos.

“Go, go, go,” Alex shouted, and then they were running.

Jody paused her assault only to kick down the door, raising her gun immediately and yelling Garth’s name angrily before vaulting into the chaos. Charlie turned and shoved the machete into Castiel’s hands before grabbing his gun and running in after her, right behind Alex, and Castiel stumbled in as well, a little confused but mostly with a racing heart, because he had _finally_ found Sam and Dean, even in the middle of chaos.

Castiel had seen so many battles. He looked at the scene and made sense of it almost instantly.

Garth and Jody were expertly fighting a set of four werewolves while Charlie closed her eyes and shot wildly in the direction of another one. A vampire was already dead on the floor and Alex was swiping at another one, acting as if she did this every Thursday, seeming almost bored. Dean was kneeling on the ground behind Sam, his back to Castiel, attempting to untie his brother’s bonds, not even noticing the vampire approaching him from behind.

It seemed like the entire room went quiet right as Castiel growled, “Hey!”

The vampire whirled, and Castiel swiftly swung the blade and took its head off in the same motion, the body collapsing to the floor. Castiel watched it fall before he looked up, the bloody blade at his side, and he immediately met the eyes of Dean Winchester.

Dean was staring at him, as if he was looking at a ghost, and he demanded, “ _Cas?_ ”

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel greeted, and then smiled.

Sam came out of nowhere. He was suddenly in front of Castiel, laughing loudly, the sound bouncing off of every surface of the room as he threw his arms around Castiel. Castiel dropped the blade and reciprocated the hug, hearing the silence of the rest of the room telling him that the siege was over.

“Cas, damn,” Sam laughed, backing away and clapping him so hard on the shoulder Castiel’s knees nearly buckled. Sam was grinning, bright, alive. “We thought you were dead.”

“No,” Castiel said, and then looked at where Dean was standing, still with that same expression. “I don’t know what happened, but I woke up a few days ago in Sioux Falls, and we all came looking for you.”

“Great timing,” Sam commented.

“Could have been better,” Alex muttered, and then looked pointedly at Garth, who looked down and pouted.

Castiel looked at Dean, realizing he wasn’t saying anything, that it was quiet, that it was time for him to say something, but Dean wasn’t moving, was barely even blinking. Castiel stared at Dean, desperate for him to say _something_ , _anything_ , but there was nothing but silence, and he wondered if he had been wrong, if he had been wrong about everything, if Dean and Sam hadn’t been running from the life, but instead had been running from _him_.

Castiel felt sick, and he was about to turn around and walk out the door when Dean suddenly moved, starting for Castiel, and everyone held their breath as Dean threw his arms around Castiel, clinging to him, burying his head in the space where Castiel’s shoulder and neck meet.

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean whispered, and it sounded like the only prayer Castiel had ever known.

Castiel raised his arms and grabbed at Dean desperately, knowing it would soon end, knowing he didn’t want it too. It didn’t occur to either of them that their hug was stretching into a time too long to be platonic until they heard the sound of a sniffle as Charlie murmured, “I ship them harder than Sterek.”

And then, seconds later, there was the shutter sound of a picture being taken, and Alex whispered, “Got it.”

Only then did Castiel and Dean pull away. And then Dean smiled at him, his eyes alive in a way Castiel hadn’t seen them in a long time, and Castiel knew that they were going to be okay.

*

“This is so lame,” Charlie groaned.

The seven of them had pulled over at the side of the road at their place of inevitable separation, an actual fork in the road, and were preparing to say their goodbyes. Jody and Alex were heading back to Sioux Falls before Jody’s PTO claimed another day for its own, Charlie and Garth were heading back to his boat to get his life back together and to spend a week watching a lot of Star Trek, and Sam, Dean, and Castiel were heading straight back to the Men of Letters bunker to face the life the Winchesters had left behind.

It was time for them to go, but no one really knew what to say.

Except for Charlie.

“I’m going to see you guys in, like, a week,” Charlie snorted to the Winchesters and Castiel, before looking to Alex. “And I’m planning on following you on Tumblr the second I get decent wifi, so we’ll keep in touch.”

“Humor me,” Garth sniffled, looking around at all of them both joyously and sadly.

Garth bounded forward and embraced Jody and Alex together, not even seeming to notice when Alex landed a solid, defensive kick to his shin. “It was so nice to meet you!” he told them before stumbling away and launching himself at the Winchesters instead, embracing Sam first before moving to Dean, and Dean squirmed uncomfortably, muttering protests into Garth’s shoulder. “I’m so glad we found you guys! It’s been awesome to see you idjits again.”

Dean sighed and then clapped Garth on the shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger, Garth.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Garth whispered happily before he trotted back to his car and Charlie, who was smirking, amused at the display.

Before Castiel saw it coming, he suddenly had an armful of Alex, and he stumbled back a step before bringing his arms up around her, returning the hug, and she squeezed harder.

“Come visit if you ever want to lose at poker,” Alex murmured to him, and he laughed, patting her back before she moved away, looking truly devastated at having to leave. “Have your pretty boy boyfriend teach you how to use video chats.”

Dean just rolled his eyes. Castiel smirked at him over her head before leaning forward and kissing her forehead.

“I will see you soon, Alex,” he told her, and she gave him one last tearful look before walking to Jody’s car, closing the door behind her like she was afraid she would jump back out and hug him again if she didn’t. Castiel smiled at her, never quite having met a human as fearless and passionate as that young woman.

“Take care, boys,” Jody called to them before waving and climbing into the driver’s seat, and all five of them watched as her car pulled back onto the highway, and Castiel watched them until they were too far away to watch anymore.

“She’ll be alright,” Dean murmured to him, and Castiel knew that, but he never realized how much it hurt for humans to watch someone they cared about leave them behind.

“We’ll probably see you in, like, a week,” Charlie told them, and then turned to Sam. “Have fun having both of them in the bunker on your own.”

Sam laughed as Garth climbed into his car, and Charlie grinned and left them behind with a strange hand gesture, two of her fingers pressed together and spaced into a V, and Castiel didn’t bother to ask as they watched them drive away, too.

Without having to say a word, they all climbed into the Impala, and Castiel settled into his seat in the back with barely-concealed relief, having missed the feel of the leather seats, the sound of the music on the radio that started the moment Dean turned the car on, the feel of the wind on his face with the windows rolled down.

Castiel realized that this was what it must feel like to be home.

They were driving about five minutes before Castiel leaned forward, his arms leaning on the back of the front seat, and he said over the music, “Dean.”

Dean reached out and turned the music down before replying, “Yeah?”

Castiel leaned closer, and then asked, “Dean, do you know how to play I Spy?”

Sam threw his head back and laughed.

Dean glanced over at Castiel, his eyes portraying surprise, but it immediately gave way to something warm enough to heat under Castiel’s skin, and a smile tugged onto Dean’s lips as he turned back to the road, looking at peace, looking happier than Castiel had ever seen him, and Castiel smiled, too.

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said, his voice drifting over the wind. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com


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